Tuesday, 05 February 2008

• Yesterday, I had to go the Migraciones office to renew my tourist visa. I think it probably would have been just as much or less of a hassle to have stayed illegally for 30 more days, but I guess that would have made me feel really nervous in the airport when I leave the country. Plus, it's just illegal, and it's against my ethics. I think.

  Yesterday marked 90 days since I've been back in the country. That's the longest period of time I'm allowed to stay without leaving to some other country and reentering. Since I had no plans of leaving, I had to make a visit to our neighborhood immigrations office and pay $30 to be able to stay 30 more days. And it just happens that we have been planning to go back to the states on the 5th of March which is exactly 30 days from yesterday!

  Now, the immigrations office does happen to be located in our neighborhood, but that doesn't mean every neighborhood has one. Actually, I think the office by our house is one of the only such offices south of Lima! So, we lucked out on that.

  We did not luck out on customer service, however. (Or immigrant service?) The lady continued doing whatever she had been working on the whole time we were in her office. We were in and out three times, as she made us first go pay the $30 at a bank, bring back the receipts, go out and make copies of the receipts we just got and a form, fill out the form, go out and make copies (at our own expense, of course) of the forms we just filled out, and get frowned at as we leave with a new stamp in my passport.

  The irony of it all is that if I had not gotten a new stamp in my passport, I would have had to pay $1 for every day I remained in the country illegally. And that just would have happened to have added up to $30. So why didn't I just stay illegally? Ethics, I suppose, and nerves.

  Hopefully, applying for our baby to have Peruvian citizenship won't take too much more effort than renewing a tourist visa.??.?. It would be nice if we didn't have to worry about visas or carnets (resident id's) or passports for our little one. But I'm not holding my breath for Peru to make that an easy process.

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